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The idea that generations past were ‘greener’ than their modern-day youthful equivalents isn’t just wishful thinking; it’s a fable

This fable begins with a young cashier snippily telling an older woman she should bring her own grocery bags because the plastic ones aren’t good for the environment. The older woman replies with a crabby catalogue of how much greener the cashier’s elders were back when they “didn’t do the green thing.”

One of those nostalgic laments for the good old days, full of finger-wagging chastisement for ungrateful whippersnappers, popped up in my in-basket the other day.

This fable begins with a young cashier snippily telling an older woman she should bring her own grocery bags because the plastic ones aren’t good for the environment. The older woman replies with a crabby catalogue of how much greener the cashier’s elders were back when they “didn’t do the green thing.”

At risk of being declared a traitor to my (age) class, I thought I’d deconstruct it. So here are the self-congratulatory fable’s main points followed by the facts in italics:

1. A wise elder generation returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to be washed sterilized and refilled. Inference: irresponsible young people like our symbolic cashier hypocritically sacrificed sustainability for recycling by lazily embracing disposable plastic jugs and cardboard cartons while complaining about plastic bags.

Fact: Milk bottles were phased out by the same generation that in this case criticizes disposable containers. This began in 1964 as a public health measure amid mounting concerns over sanitation and the difficulty of mass sterilization of bottles by dairies. You can still have your milk delivered in a re-usable bottle today but it will cost you about twice the price of a disposable container. There is a movement calling for a return to refillable containers for milk and beverages. It is driven largely by young people — like the metaphorical cashier dissed in the fable.

2. Back then, groceries came in brown paper bags that were reused for numerous things including covers for schoolbooks. This ensured public property was not defaced with inane scribbling. Inference: Sanctimonious young people push reusable shopping bags when paper bags are already reusable. Kids with no respect for public property deface their school books whereas their responsible grandparents were careful to mark only the brown paper wrappings salvaged from grocery bags.

Fact: You can still get your groceries bagged in paper, even in stores where they make you pay for plastic and encourage sturdy reusable bags. Paper grocery bags were invented around 1870. The plastic grocery bag, on the other hand, was invented by the very generation for which this fable purports to speak. The plastic bag was introduced in 1950 – if you’re under 62 you weren’t even alive when that happened. But it was enthusiastically embraced by the same generation that conceived the baby boom and which now complains about Boomers and their plastic bags.

As for the defacement of school books: before me, as I write, are several from the 1920s that passed through the hands of at least three successive schoolgirls. The first, a text which from 1929 to 1933 belonged in sequence to Winnie, Hazel and Mildred Davey of Magee Secondary, is well illustrated with jokes, witty teenage notes, and even a charming drawing of a delighted young woman apparently about to be smooched by a handsome chap. Above is doodled “Ah! ‘Tis love!” Oh, those old devils, what they secretly got up to in the back row behind the brown paper wrappers!

3. We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. Inference: Unlike those lazy, car-mad youngsters who won’t climb a flight of stairs, we preferred walking to driving.

Fact: The modern safety elevator was invented in 1857 and installed in a frenzy of market growth – 2,000 per cent by 1873 – primarily because it offered a solution to a huge problem. The elevator meant cities could grow vertically, increasing density and reducing the reliance on horse transportation. Turns out the good old days before the car were a fly-infested, disease-ridden urban nightmare of horse manure. In New York and London, horses defecated 622 million kilograms on the streets each year. Perhaps that’s why our grandparents, once the car had been invented, bought 115.8 million vehicles between 1931, when the U.S. population numbered 124 million, and 1967, when it was 198 million — and the first baby boomers were old enough to buy their own cars. That averages 1.6 cars bought for every new person joining the population over those years. Who went car crazy, again? Meanwhile, the elevator transformed the urban landscape as high rises replaced walk-ups and skyscrapers replaced high rises in the early 20th century. The escalator evolved from a turn of the 19th century amusement park ride and developed in tandem with the elevator, entering wide use starting in 1920. Seems the seniors couldn’t abandon the stairs fast enough.

4. Back then, we washed baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling dryer.

Fact: The first disposable diapers came to market in 1942. They went to mass market in 1948, coinciding — surprise! — with the first births of the baby boom. That young cashier’s grandmother’s generation embraced disposables in huge numbers. It’s the environmentally-concerned young women of today who champion reusable cloth diapers– although even among them, the jury is still out on whether the benefits of washables are as clearcut as enthusiasts argue.

The electric clothes dryer was invented in the early 20th-century by a farmer sick of wet clothes freezing on the line during prairie winters. His automated drum dryer went to market in 1938 and the rest, as they say, is history. By 1950, sales were 60,000 a year. Our cashier’s grandmothers thought the electric dryer an indispensable idea. This fable must have been written by a man.

5. Back then, we had one TV, not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. We used a push mower. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club.

Fact: That old 19-inch cathode ray tube TV with the awful, flickering, snowy, blue and grey picture used three times as much power as the thin LED models that provide stunning high definition images in full colour today. People today still don’t have a TV in every room. Canadians average 1.8 TV sets per household. The electric blender was first marketed in 1922 and by 1950 at least a million households in North America had one. The mixer preceded the blender. It was invented in 1908. It was so popular that even in the depths of the Great Depression, 300,000 units a year were sold by the leading mixer company. The gasoline-powered lawn mower was brought to market in 1921 and by 1950 more than a million a year were being sold. The history of the public gymnasium dates from ancient Greece but in North America, it first took off as a mass market phenomenon in 1947, just when people born in the 1922 were turning 25 and conceiving the baby boom.

6. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen and we replaced razor blades instead of tossing the razor.

Fact: Paper cups were introduced in 1907 in response to growing public health concerns about communicable diseases from public drinking sources. Consumption of commercial bottled water dates from the early 1800s. The first popular brands in the 19th century were Perrier, San Pellegrino and Evian. In Canada, commercially bottled water has been sold for a century. So it’s not our metaphorical young cashier’s generation that’s responsible for the rise of paper cups and bottled water and the decline of drinking fountains, it’s her great-great-grandparents and great-grandparents that are to blame. By the way, it’s young people who promote the sensible drinking of tap water and carrying it in refillable stainless steel bottles. As for refilling pens – the first patent on the non-refillable ballpoint was issued in 1888 but it didn’t reach the mass market until RAF aircrews discovered it worked better than fountain pens at high altitude. Ballpoints went to mass market in 1945 and quickly dominated. Fountain pens reinvented themselves as executive status symbols. As for razors, disposable blades displaced the reusable straight razor during the First World War when the safety razor was adopted by the U.S. army, which bought millions. The first electric razor was patented in 1928.

7. Back then people took the street car or a bus and rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

Fact: People used public transit less back in the day than they do now. In 1923, 12 per cent of public transit was by train; in 2010, it was 34 per cent. Four per cent took the bus in 1923; by 2010 it was 51.4 per cent. As for riding bicycles, the great cycling boom began in 1960. At its peak, sales topped 17 million units, most of which were to new cyclists. Today, it’s young people who predominate in riding to school and to work – and they are activists, demanding bicycle lanes and paths that make their commutes safer. It’s older drivers, who have no intention of abandoning their cars, who put up the biggest resistance – witness the bike lane wars in Vancouver.

8. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.

Fact: The mass electrification of society was launched with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935 during the Great Depression. Within two years, 1.5 million homes had been electrified and by the 1950s virtually every household was on the grid. The average house size in which the grumpy 85-year-old seniors of this piece were raised by their own parents was 91.3 square metres; the average size of the house those kids bought or built for themselves between 1950 and 1970 grew to 139.5 square metres and they filled their new houses with new electrical appliances. The 1950s launched the era of the electric range, refrigerator, washing machine, TV sets, phonographs, electric mixers, coffee makers, and even the rare microwave oven. One outlet per room couldn’t handle that suite of appliances – and didn’t.

9. And, finally, we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

Fact: Despite protestations to the contrary, seniors have always taken an enthusiastic liking to “computerized gadgets” like the smart phone. In 2011, 483,600 seniors owned an iPad. Seniors spend an average of 33.7 hours per week online – that is 1.5 hours more than the average for young people aged 18-24. Furthermore, 52 per cent of people aged 50 or older use smart phones to get mobile information and 30 per cent use them to check the weather and — Oh my goodness! — find a local restaurant.

This fable begins with a young cashier snippily telling an older woman she should bring her own grocery bags because the plastic ones aren’t good for the environment. The older woman replies with a crabby catalogue of how much greener the cashier’s elders were back when they “didn’t do the green thing.”

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